


There's A Light On In Chicago

by detuned_radio



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, One Shot, Pete's POV, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 00:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12519196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detuned_radio/pseuds/detuned_radio
Summary: I told myself I’d do it today. But the hours slowly ticked by, and my chances got fewer and fewer, and soon we were both slipping into bed, whispering our ‘goodnight’s and our ‘I love you’s and tonight the timer will reset and the same thing will happen tomorrow. That’s what happened yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before that, for weeks now I’ve had this timer setting and resetting and ticking down just to start over again and it’s ultimately very pointless if it can’t set a deadline.





	There's A Light On In Chicago

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished reading Pete's book and......holy hell.....that was an emotional rollercoaster. This is kind of an afterthought of that. I've got all Pete's thoughts in my head, I thought I'd put it to use. Here's a thing I wrote up at midnight because I felt like it. Stranger Things season 2 just came out like fifteen minutes ago and I can already tell I'm not sleeping tonight, send help. Anyway rambling over enjoy

It’s silent. Everything is silent. It’s been cloudy all day, and I’d been expecting to fall asleep to rainfall tonight, but now a soft blanket of snow covers chicago, painted honey-golden by the streetlights, more flakes drifting quietly and politely to the ground, dropping upon the thin layer of snow without a noise, and leaving me in silence. Even his breathing doesn’t make a noise. Patrick’s always been a quiet sleeper. Never snores, which makes him an absolutely wonderful bedmate. Too bad I can’t manage to take advantage of that fact, since I’m one of those unlucky people whose mind works the night shift. 

I knew from the second I sprawled myself on the bed that I wouldn’t be getting to sleep tonight. Somehow I can always tell. That itching in my brain has kept me up for hours, and I want to blame it on the insomnia, but the truth is, this time, there seems to be a reason.

The ring is still stuffed in the bedside drawer. In a tiny velvet box, because I wanted to buy something at least a little fancy for him, a simple aluminum band because I didn’t want to take it too far. Patrick doesn’t wear diamonds. He wouldn’t wear rubies or sapphires or emeralds, he wouldn’t wear gold or silver. He doesn’t gloat like that. All the trophies he’s won and rightly deserved for his outstanding talent, he’s never displayed. He keeps them, for sure, he’s not _ungrateful,_ but he never shows them off. He’s perfect in that way, I think. I just bought him a simple ring, smooth and lustrous apart from tiny little patterns carved into the metal, hardly noticeable but adding just a bit of flare, cause just because he’s humble doesn’t mean he doesn’t have style. I chose aluminum because it’s light, but sturdy, reliable. The metal airplanes are built from. I wanted what it was made from to have some sort of significance to our relationship, but it’s hard to relate a network of complex and powerful feelings to a piece of metal. We’ve been on a hell of a lot of airplanes together. That’s about as deep as it gets.

In any case, I think he’ll like it. I hope so. I'm sure he would if I would ever work up the goddamn courage to give it to him already. 

I told myself I’d do it today. But the hours slowly ticked by, and my chances got fewer and fewer, and soon we were both slipping into bed, whispering our ‘goodnight’s and our ‘I love you’s and tonight the timer will reset and the same thing will happen tomorrow. That’s what happened yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before that, for weeks now I’ve had this timer setting and resetting and ticking down just to start over again and it’s ultimately very pointless if it can’t set a deadline. 

The control freak in me is going crazy. Because, in this case, I don’t even have any control over myself. I might build up all these plans in my head, scribbling formulas and detailed structures and all those different setups they teach you in school to organize your thoughts, all the intricacies are worked out and I’m ready, I’ve got it all sorted out and I have all this information stored perfectly in my head, and then he looks at me with that smile and wipes the board clean. Everything is gone, and I’m so pathetic, I realize I can’t do this. Every night, I’ve been thinking the same thing.

I tell myself that tomorrow, it’ll be different. I will get better at this. I will change. But tonight, he’s asleep, there’s nothing I can do right now, so I can put getting better off for a few more hours. I procrastinate on it. A few hours turns to a few days, could turn to a few weeks, months, years, as much as I hate to think about that. Now or never has never had more meaning.

And so I choose now, because I know there’s no way I could live with never. I have to keep myself quiet, knowing Patrick is a light sleeper. I have to pry myself away from him first, because he’s curled and tangled against me in a mess of limbs. I manage eventually to yank myself free, and I take a moment then to look at his face pressed against the pillow. His soft lips are slightly parted, hair tousled against his forehead. His eyelids twitch a bit in his sleep, and I’d kill to know what he’s dreaming about right now. If beauty went by any other name, it would be Patrick Martin Vaughn Stump.

I pull my gaze away from his face, which is somehow more difficult than pulling my body away from his, and slowly slide open the drawer. The box is there, tucked in the back, hidden like a treasure. I pull it out, crack it open, watch how the polished metal glints softly in the dim light. I’m fighting the hesitation back as I pull the ring gently out of its box. I’m done being too scared to do this. This is the night I finally take control. Gently, my hands hardly ghosting over his skin, I lift his ring finger and slide the ring on. It fits perfectly and looks great on him, but then again, most everything does. I lay his hand back down gently, and pride myself in the fact that he hardly even stirred.

I drop my head back on the pillow, listening to the silence. I decide to try out a technique my psychiatrist was talking about, listening for my pulse on the pillow. It takes a little time, searching for it through the silence, but eventually I find it and cling to it, let it consume me. That subtle _fft, fft, ftt,_ a perfect, pre-programmed biological rhythm that I’ve subconsciously written into countless songs. My eyes close. Everything is darkness and a quiet pulse. Only moments before I drift to sleep do I realize that now that everything is done, the ring is on his finger and fate is already in place, there’s absolutely nothing I can do, and I have less control than ever.

-

I wake up like I almost always do, with Patrick burying his face in my neck, pressing himself close to me, placing tiny kisses on my cheek. Showering me with affection in the early morning. I greet him like I always do, smiling and suddenly coming to life to return one of the kisses. He responds like he always does, with a surprised little squeak--after all these mornings, he still makes that sound--and a sleepy little laugh. Normally I’d find things this predictable monotonous, but everything with him feels like the first time. He’s keeping me alive, I swear.

I’m perfectly happy slipping into the normal morning routine until I remember last night. The ring, the tired decisions. Things I wish I could go back on, things I’m so glad I can’t go back on at the same time. I get a little nervous and a little quieter because of that. I figure Patrick notices, he reads me like a book. If he does, however, he doesn’t say anything, just plants a last little kiss on my nose and gets out of bed. He leaves the room, and normally, I’d stay in here for a few more minutes, letting the tiredness gradually shed off, but this morning I’m wide awake, as well as not wanting to leave Patrick alone for a second. He could notice the ring at any moment, and I want to be there if everything goes right and he pulls me into a hug and a million kisses with an enthusiastic “yes,” need to be there if it goes wrong and I have to apologize and try to reconcile. I slip out of bed quickly, following him to the kitchen and keeping my distance as not to appear too much like a predator going after its prey. 

He smiles at me when he notices me up earlier, and gets to work preparing himself a bowl of cereal and some coffee. The whole time, I’m not really sure what to do with myself. I’m not really hungry this early, so there’s not a lot for me to do apart from slink around and wait. I sprawl out on the couch for a little while, pretending to flip through a newspaper when my eyes are actually fixed on Patrick, like a goddamn spy or something. It’s getting ridiculous. Eventually, I make my way back into the kitchen, hovering just over Patrick’s shoulder most of the time. He can definitely tell something’s up now.

I start getting scared. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. Why’d I have to spring it on him when he was asleep instead of when he was awake? It sure makes me look cowardly. I know it felt like the brave thing to do in that instant, but I’m not sure how I’d go about explaining that. Same way I couldn’t tell my psychiatrist about the time spilling a salad all over my car nearly pushed me off the deep end. I can’t be sure it’ll be taken the way I intend it to. I’ve never been good at describing the stupid shit that goes on in my brain without appearing utterly psychotic.

It’s when he’s pouring himself a cup of coffee that he freezes. I freeze too. In that moment, I think the entirety of Chicago may be frozen in time, holding its breath. Possibly the whole US. The entire world. I swear, the coffee he’s pouring stops for a moment, a stream from the coffee pot to the mug just suspended in the air. And then his eyes shoot to mine from where they were fixed downward, and I can tell he’s scanning my face, calculating what this means. If it were a joke, I’d be laughing by now. He’s known something was up all morning. Hell, he’s probably known something’s been off for weeks now. He knows. There’s no way he doesn’t know.

And then a pair of arms are around me, very nearly squeezing the life out of me. I suddenly come back to myself, pulling in a breath despite the suffocating hold he has on me. I return it in an instant, hugging him back. I’m not sure why I do it. I’m not even sure it’s a yes yet. This could be some kind of twisted way of saying “sorry, no.” The thing is, though, I don’t know the protocol for this. I have no idea how else to react, no chapters have been written on how to react in this tiny interval of time, my dad never pulled me aside to tell me what to do in the few seconds that you’re unsure whether the love of your life is going to say yes or not, and these few seconds are simultaneously the longest and shortest of my entire life.

After an eternity, after milliseconds, he’s releasing his vice-like grip, a disbelieving smile on his face and tears condensing in his eyes. I hate seeing him cry, but I love seeing him smile, and the combination of the two just more thoroughly frying my brain, which is already terribly short-circuited. All the tangents my mind would go on right now are stopped short. I want to consider how weird it is for people to cry when proposed to. I want to consider how long it would have taken for him to notice the ring if it had been encrusted with shining gemstones. But my thoughts are cut off, there’s no room for them because everything right now is just him. That, I think vaguely, is probably what being in love is. Someone you love will cut all those tangents short, make all the screaming in your mind go silent and fill the empty spaces with themselves. That sounds about right. I love him.

He keeps staring at me, expecting. I realize I need to initiate this, even though he already knows the question, and judging by how he’s looking at me, begging me to ask it, I think he already knows the answer.

My voice is hoarse. My lips curl around the sounds unnaturally. This isn’t really something I’m used to saying, it feels strange playing in my voice. I manage to ask it anyway. “Marry me?” I’m just glad my voice doesn’t crack.

“Yes,” he breathes before the words are even fully out of my mouth, and god does is sound just right in his voice. I’m lucky, because he says it again. “Yes, yes,” he repeats, his eyes filled to the brim with tears. I think I’m getting a little misty-eyed myself.

His smile is a virus, and I want to be infected now. My lips meet his, and soon the disease is in my bloodstream too, my lips curling upward, both of us grinning like a couple of idiots even as we kiss.

I’m so relieved. All I can think about is how grateful I am that it went that way. Yelling “THANK FUCK” seems like it would ruin the moment, though, so I stay silent. Even so, nothing is going unsaid. I love him. He loves me. That’s obvious enough. That’s all we need.

He pulls away from the kiss, beaming at me with this smile that’s just killing me and simultaneously keeping me alive. “You put it on the wrong finger, idiot,” he whispers affectionately.

Well. If that’s his only criticism, I’d say I didn’t do too bad. I kiss him again, whispering “I love you” into the kiss. 

It’s returned in an instant, a heartfelt and beautiful “I love you too” spilling from his lips against mine. The city’s not frozen anymore. It bustles on, uncaring and unaware. Snow falls over the buildings, the streets, over the iced-over Lake Michigan. It’s warm in here. There’s two lights on in Chicago, and you wouldn’t know the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. Comments are a writer's life blood and very much appreciated, don't be shy. Have a great day/night/timeless purgatory


End file.
